ALthough we ought to take in good part,
whatever God in His Infinite wisdom hath,
for the punishment of our sins, carved out
unto us, & eye & acknowledge Him alone in it;
And though we always ought to acknowledge Government
& Governours as ordained by Him, in so
far as they rule & govern according to the Rules
set down by Him in His word, & Constitutive Laws
of the Nation, & ought to cast the mantle
of Love on the lesser errours of Governours, &
give the best countenance to their Administration,
that the nature of their Actions will bear: Yet
when all these Laws, both of God & the Kingdom,
conditional & constitutive of the Government, are
cassed & annulled, by pretended Laws, & the highest
of usurpation, & an inexplicable prerogative in matters
Ecclesiastick, & arbitrary Government in matters
Civil, is arrogate; when a banner of impiety,
profaneness, & atheism is avowedly displayed against
the heavens; a door open to abominations of all
sorts & sizes, & the remedy thereof still denied,
by him who should be as a sun & shield to the
people; when the Parliaments, who ought to be
the grand Trustees of the Kingdom, to whom it belongs
in such a case to secure the Civil & Spiritual
Interests, are so prelimited by Law, as that no
true son of the State or Church hath Liberty to sit
& vote there; So that the parliaments, & all places
of publick trust & offices of the Kingdom, from
the highest to the lowest, are made up of none but
these who are corrupted, overawed, overruled,
& bribed; what shall the people do in such an
extremity? Should they give their Reason as men,
their Consciences as Christians, & resign their Liberties,
fortunes, Religion, & their All to the
inexorable obstinacy, incurable wilfulness, & malice
of these, who, in spite of God & man (& notwithstanding
of their many oaths & vows both to
God & his people) are resolved to make their own
will the absolute & sovereign Rule of their Actions,
and their strained Indulgences the measure of the subject’s
hope & happiness? Shall the end of Government
be lost, through the weakness, wickedness,
& Tyranny of Governours? Must the people, by
an implicit submission & deplorable stupidity, destroy
themselves, & betray their posterity, & become
objects of reproach to the present generation,
& pity & contempt to the future? Have they not,
in such an extremity, good ground to make use of
that natural & radical power they have, to shake
off that yoke, which neither we nor our forefathers
were able to bear? Which accordingly the Lord
honoured us (in a General & unprelimited Meeting
of the Estates and several Shires of Scotland) to do; A Convention
of unprelimited members, a Convention of men who
had only the glory of God & the good of the Commonwealth
before their eyes; The Like whereof the present reigning
Tyrant could never since his home coming pretend
to? At which Convention, he was most Legally
& by General consent cast off, by the Declaration
afterward published at Sanquhar, by especial warrant
from the said Convention. But that we may
not seem to have done that, or yet to do the like,
upon no grounds, or yet upon few & small grounds,
we shall hint at some of the many thousands of the
misdemeanours of the now cast off Tyrant, in his
overturning of our Church and State.

And First, At his very entry, as if he had attained
to Nero’s desire, at one blow, in his first Parliament,
he cut off the neck of that noble constitution
of Church and State, which our noble &
worthy Ancestors had made; And not thinking it
enough treacherously & falsely to perjure himself, he
made such constitutions & Laws (if it be not an abuse
of Language to call them so) as that none but fowls
of his own feather, & such as would run with himself
to the same excess of riot, should have access
to the very meanest place or office in the Kingdom:
And though that in itself is enough, yet not the
thousand part of what he hath done.

2. Did he not take to himself a Licentious
privilege, the exalting of himself unto a Sphere
exceeding all measures Divine & human, tyrannically
obtruding his will for a Law, both in matters
Civil & Ecclesiastic, making us a Laughingstock
to the neighbouring Nations, who imagined that
what he was doing (however tyrannous in itself)
to be consonant to our Law, blaming the badness
of the Law instead of the badness of the Governours,
whereas nothing could be less consonant to the tenor
& end of our, & all other Laws, divine & human.
For we have reason to praise the Lord, who
so eminently assisted our Ancestors in framing of
our Laws, So that we may (upon good ground)
say, that there is no Nation in Civilibus hath better,
& in Ecclesiasticis so good Laws as we; having
(by God’s great providence) attained unto a
more excellent & strict Reformation than any nation.
The observing of which Laws, was the very
Constitutive & absolute Condition, whereupon he
was admitted to the Royal office, & without which
he was not to have the exercise of his power, &
to which he was most solemnly & deeply sworn
oftener than once, with his hands lifted up to
the most High God; he himself declaring the subjects
tye no longer to remain or continue, than the
ends & constitutions of these Convenants were
pursued and preserved by him: All which are (contrary
to his engagement foresaid,) by his pretended
(& as aforesaid constitute) Parliaments cassed & annulled,
and the Laws no more made the Rule, but
his own will in his Letters: So that we are made
the reproach of the Nations, who say we have
only the Law of Letters, instead of the Letter of
the Law.

3. Hath it not been his constant method, to
adjourn & dissolve parliaments at his pleasure,
when they (though his own creatures) were so sensible
of his misdemeanours, that they began to question,
& when questioned by them ye may easily conjecture
what they were.

4. Hath he not seated himself as supreme head
over all Persons, in all Causes Civil & Ecclesiastick?
And by virtue of that arrogantly arrogated power,
fabricate a Chimerick Government, or rather Pageantry
in the Church, with such Ludibrious eminences,
pompous power & pride, through the vanity
of men’s depraved imaginations, the grievous
& mysterious abyss, from whence have issued all
the calamities, all the languishing Sorrows, &
confounding shames & reproaches, which, in this
day of blackness & darkness, have invaded, involved,
polluted, & pestered the Church and Kingdom.
And thus hath he approven himself to be
the Defender of the faith, under which the godly
party, true sons of the Church & Nation, have
been groaning these twenty years bygone, & in great
numbers murthered & slain in the fields, led as
Lambs to the slaughter upon scaffolds, imprisoned,
& kept in irons, & with exquisite tortures tormented,
exiled, banished, & sold as slaves amongst savages:
All which they endured most patiently a long time,
ere ever they offered to appear in publick in arms
against him. And all this they have met with as a reward
(just upon the Lord’s part, though unjust &
ungrate as to his part) for their too great & inordinate
Love wherewith they prevented him in the
day of his distress; being the first & only beginning of
his unhappy restoration.

5. Time would fail us to narrate, what exorbitant
taxings, cessings, & every way impoverishing
of the subjects, & grinding of the faces of the poor,
dilapidating the pendicles, rights, & revenues of
the Crown, for no other end, but to employ them
for keeping up a Brothel, rather than a Court, since
there is no Court in the world hath attained unto
such a height of debauchery & depravedness, as
that Court by his example hath done. For

Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis.

6. And Lastly, as if it had not been enough to
exercise such a tyrannical & arbitrary power himself,
he, by a late Parliament such as the former, intends
that his cruelty & tyranny should not die with himself,
but that he shall in his own time install such an
one (if not worse) as himself, contrary to all Law,
reason, & Religion, And in that Parliament to unhinge
very Protestantism itself, by framing a
Test, such as no Protestant (how corrupt soever)
can take, And so ridiculous, that it is made the
laughingstock even of enemies themselves.

Is it then any wonder, considering such dealings
& many thousands more, that true Scotsmen (though
we have been always and even to extremity sometimes
Loyal to our Kings) should after twenty years
tyranny break out at last, as we have done, & put
in practice that power, which God & nature hath
given us, & we have reserved to our selves, All
our engagements with our princes, having been always
Conditional, as other Kingdoms are implicitly,
but ours explicitly?

Let none therefore object against the Legality
of what we have done, or are doing: For we offer us
(how inconsiderable soever we are said to be) to
prove our selves to have done nothing against our
Ancient Laws Civil or Ecclesiastick, against any
Lawyers or Divines whatsoever, our Ancient Laws
being judges; And we having safety to pass & repass
(if the publick faith after so many breaches can be trusted)
for that effect. So then, let no foreign Kingdoms
or Churches through misinformation or false copies
(as they are many) of what we act or do, because
we have no access to the press as they; We say, let
them not take up a wrong opinion of us, or our
Proceedings: for we are only endeavouring to extricate
our selves from under a Tyrannous yoke, &
to reduce our Church & state to what they were, in
the years 1648 & 1649.

We Therefore, have Conveened, In our Name &
authority, Ratify & Approve what hath been done
by the Rutherglen & Sanquhar Declarations. And
do by thir [these] presents, Rescind, annul, & make void,
whatsoever hath been done by Charles Stewart or
his Accomplices in prejudice to our Ancient Laws
& Liberties, in all the several pretended & prelimited
Parliaments & Conventions, since the
year 1660. And particularly, the late Parliament
holden at Edinburgh the 28. July 1681. by a Commissioner
professedly Popish, & for villany exiled
his native Land, with all the acts & Laws there
statue & enacted: As that abominable, ridiculous,
unparalleled, & soul-perjuring Test, & the
rest.

We therefore Command & charge you to pass to the
mercat Cross of Lanerk, And in our name & authority,
publish this our Act & Declaration as ye will
be answerable. Given at the 15. December 1681.

Let King Jesus reign, & all his enemies be
Scattered.

[ This text is presented above as it was published in the original 1687 Informatory Vindication;
which may be considered the most authentic available, being published by those who adhered to the declaration.
Minor adjustments or corrections have been made to the spelling of some words.
As in the edition of 1687, Italicized phrases represent expressions which were
excepted against by those who criticized the Declaration, which are either explained
or disowned in Head 2
of the Informatory Vindication.—JTKer. ]